Membership

Gain instant access to guided, step-by-step courses and tutorials on how to visualize your data for insight and presentation.

Learning data visualization beyond the spreadsheet is a challenge when you first start out.

There are countless applications and services to help visualize your data, and they all seem to promise ultimate insights and beautiful graphics.

But as it turns out, the automated way is not always best. It rarely is.

Visualization in Practice

Learn with real data and concrete examples, all in one place.

The best way to learn how to visualize data is to start doing it now. Look at real data to see how visual forms work and how to negotiate between more efficient and more visually compelling chart types.

Improvement comes with experience.

And this is how I approach FlowingData courses and tutorials.

I explain how a method works, provide you the tools — which includes source code in R and d3.js — to get your stuff done, and then provide you with a wrap-up so you can apply what you learn to your own data.

The advice in the how-tos are based on my own experiences as a statistician and on projects for both web and print.

Who Should Join

Where there is data, there is a need for someone to understand it and to communicate.

Data Scientists and Statisticians

Understanding data is what you do and the faster you can produce graphs, the sooner you can get back to analyses. And when the time comes to present your results, you’ll know what to do.

Designers

Whether you freelance or are in-house, add visualization to your repertoire to find new work or to make yourself indispensable. Click-and-drag tools can only get you so far with data.

Researchers

Got a ton of data to analyze or include in your next paper? Stop fumbling around with one-off tools and learn what works.

Journalists

Complement your words with visuals to tell your stories.

The list goes on. Data is everywhere these days, and there is a growing need to understand it. If you can visualize data, your skills will be in high demand in a lot of places.

No programming experience? Not a problem. While the resources on FlowingData are code-centric, tutorials are written with beginners in mind, and if you get stuck, there are places to ask questions.

Who I Am

My name is Nathan Yau, and I’ve been running this place since 2007. I have a PhD in statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and I have a background in programming and information design. I’ve written two best-selling books on visualization — Visualize This and Data Points.

I strive to help people understand data in both their personal and professional lives. Hopefully they have fun in the process.

The Tutorials

Follow step-by-step examples to make the data graphics you want for reports, presentations, and analyses.

Learn to make beautiful and useful visualizations.

There are currently over 80 in-depth tutorials — with more every month — amounting to hundreds of hours of learning. Mostly in R and d3.js, the tutorials walk you through step-by-step so that you can make a countless number of data graphics for reports, presentations, and analysis. Tutorials include data to work with, source code downloads, and examples to work off of.

If you get stuck, there’s a section at the end of each tutorial to ask questions and see previous answers.

The Courses

If you don’t have a specific visualization in mind, and instead, are just eager to learn, these guided courses are for you. There are currently two.

Work with the suggested schedule or move at your own pace.

Visualization in R, From Beginner to Advanced

This is a four-week course that starts with the basics and walks through more complex methods. Create basic charts, make use of visualization packages, map geographic data, and create custom graphics to use with your own data.

Each section provides exercises to hone your skills.

Visualizing Time Series Data in R, a Crash Course

Work through the essentials of patterns over time in a quick two-day crash course. Complete it over a weekend and come back to work with the skills to make plots that take care of most use cases.

Beyond the Spreadsheet

There are a ton of tools and apps to help you visualize data. There are workshops and classes. These cost thousands of dollars. There are books, guides, blogs, and podcasts that provide tips and commentary for the “best” charts.

But nothing compares to actually working with data.

FlowingData tutorials and courses get you past knowing the “rules” of visualization and into figuring out how to work within a flexible framework. You’ll spend less time thinking about and staring at charts and way more time making and producing results you can see.